1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to displaying information on an electronic terminal, and more particularly, to displaying a Web page, which includes a frameset in a suitable format based on a display resolution of the electronic terminal.
2. Description of Related Art
Client computers may connect to a network in order access various types of content from servers connected to that network. The World Wide Web (referred to simply as “the Web”) is a network of computers all over the world that communicate with each other using protocols and computer languages developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Data available on the Web is generally stored in documents called Web pages.
A client computer connected to the World Wide Web may retrieve information by downloading Web pages stored on various servers on the Web. A Web browser is a computer program that, when executed on a client computer, enables the client computer to read and display Web pages. A Web browser includes a user interface component for addressing a particular server on network and designating a particular document (e.g., a Web page) to be obtained from the addressed server. Using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a Web browser fetches the designated documents from the server. Also, a Web browser includes a component for displaying the content of Web pages.
In particular, Web browsers are operable to display the content of Web pages, which are formatted as markup language documents. “Markup language document” generally refers to a text file that includes “markup tags.” In particular, markup tags tell the Web browser how to display the Web page. Such tags are used to define hypertext links, specify format changes, or otherwise indicate how particular elements in the Web page should be displayed. Examples of markup language documents are Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), and extensible Markup Language (XML) documents. For purposes of this disclosure, the term “(X)HTML” will hereafter be used to collectively refer to both HTML and XHTML documents.
Certain types of Web pages are known as frameset documents. Frameset documents may be formatted as either an HTML or XHTML document. The frameset technique is a part of (X)HTML, as defined by the W3C. The technique is used to combine a set of Web pages into a single browser window, while specifying the position of the different windows in one frameset document.
Specifically, a frameset document is an (X)HTML document in which a FRAMESET replaces the BODY section found in ordinary (X)HTML documents. The FRAMESET section specifies the layout of “frames,” which are rectangular sub-areas in the main browser window. A separate document (e.g., markup language document) may be displayed inside each frame. When the sub-area for a particular frame is not large enough to display the entire Web document for that frame, scrollbars (vertical and horizontal) are appended to the frame to provide individual scrolling for that frame.
Framesets can be nested to any level. In a frameset document, the FRAMESET section may also contain a NOFRAMES element to provide alternative content for Web browsers that either lack frame support or are configured to ignore frames.
Most of the Web pages currently available on the World Wide Web are designed for desktop computers with large color monitors having relatively high resolutions. However, mobile wireless communication devices, such as mobile telephones and palmtop computers, typically have much smaller displays and, thus, much lower resolutions. Such low-resolution devices experience difficulties in displaying Web pages designed for higher resolutions. Ordinary television screens, which may also be used for displaying Web content, also typically have a lower resolution than common computer monitors. Thus, televisions screen similarly experience problems display many Web pages supporting high resolutions.
When characterizing a display, the term “resolution” refers to the number of horizontal and vertical pixels supported by the display. For example, an 800×600 resolution refers to 800 horizontal pixels and 600 vertical pixels. Typically, a screen that displays less than 800 pixels horizontally, or less than 600 pixels vertically, is understood as having a relatively low resolution and, thus, may need some assistance to display available Web pages. There are display devices with even smaller displays for viewing Web content, such as screens with resolutions of 640×480 or less, which are particularly in need of assistance for displaying Web documents.
A particular type of problem occurs when a low-resolution screen is used for displaying a frameset document. Specifically, a very small portion of the Web page inside each frame will fit into the sub-area of the screen defined for that frame, thereby requiring a large amount of scrolling to convey any meaningful information. Such scrolling may be required on two separate levels a user may be required to manipulate scrollbars in both the frame, and the frameset document.
In order to display Web content on low-resolution displays, some Web browsers utilize formatting techniques that remove or change the sizes of page elements in more or less intelligent manners. Existing formatting techniques have had relative success in displaying certain types of Web sties, but do not offer satisfying solutions for viewing frameset documents. Specifically, Web browsers with formatting techniques for low-resolution screens have until now been unable to display several frames simultaneously in one browser window.
Existing formatting technologies have attempted to deal with the problem of frameset documents. The most commonly used solution is to display a list containing different links to each of the frames. Examples of this approach are applied in Access Inc.'s Netfront™ browser and Anygraaf's Doris™ browser.
Another prior implementation has been to employ the NOFRAMES element, which displays content custom-made for browsers without support for frames. However, most modern desktop browsers support HTML frames and, thus, NOFRAMES content is rarely found on the Web.
Another approach to displaying frameset documents on a narrow screen is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,593,944, which is assigned to Palm, Inc. An implementation of this technique is found in the Handspring Blazer™ browser. This patent describes a method for generating a frame representation, which includes a plurality of geometric frame identifiers. Through this geometric representation, users can navigate into frameset pages one at the time. Another embodiment disclosed in this patent is to automatically display one of the frame pages, without navigating through the top-level frameset page. Both these techniques have limitations, since users will never see the whole content of the Web site within the same browser window. This makes navigation slow, and does not provide users with a complete overview of the page content.
Another approach to displaying frameset documents is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0054126 A1, “Browser translation between frames and no frames”, filed by IBM Corp. The technique disclosed in this application rewrites the frameset document to create a page without frames. Specifically, multiple frames are transformed into a single document by exchanging frameset tags with proprietary “include” tags.
As such, none of the above-mentioned formatting techniques is able to retain multiple frames in the markup, and to simultaneously display the frames on one browser window of a low-resolution device.